Giuseppe De Palo

Ombudsman

Tel:  + 1 646-781-4083; Email:  gdepalo@unicef.org

Giuseppe De Palo (Italy) was the Ombudsman for United Nations Funds and Programmes. His team, based in New York City, was tasked with helping prevent and resolve work-related disputes within UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNOPS and UN-Women.  During his career, Mr. De Palo has contributed to the resolution of over 2,500 disputes, mediating cases in more than 60 countries and dealing with parties of over 90 different nationalities.

Before joining the UN, Mr. De Palo was Chairman of the Board of ADR Center, one of the largest providers of mediation services in Europe. Concurrently, he served as Director of JAMS International, a subsidiary of JAMS, the largest private provider of alternative dispute resolution services in the world. Mr. De Palo started his academic career in 1995 and, in 2002, became the International Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution Law and Practice at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, where he taught courses in Negotiation, Advanced Negotiation and Cross-Cultural Negotiation. Between 2004 and 2015 he served for some of the largest international donor organizations as project director in a wide range of initiatives to promote the knowledge and use of mediation and arbitration around the world (including in Afghanistan, Serbia, Kenya, Barbados, Nigeria, Turkey as well as throughout the Middle-East and the European Union). Mr. De Palo has provided expert advice to national and supranational parliaments as well as advised the ministers of Justice and Economics of several countries on dispute resolution policy. He has written extensively on mediation and some of his publications have been translated into multiple languages.

Mr. De Palo is a graduate of the law schools at the University of Bologna (JD, 1991) and the University of California at Berkeley (LLM, 1995). He also has a Degree in Political Sciences from the University of Urbino (1994).